Do It Over, Kupo!
by Sorrow has a Human Heart
Summary: While paying respects to her deceased father, Tifa encounters an obnoxious moogle who makes a very unwanted offer to send her back through time to fix things. But wait-aren't moogles just kids' toys? Has she completely lost her mind, or does she really have no choice?
1. Chapter 1

**A/N: **I don't intend for this to be a very serious fic. I'm writing this mostly to help break through a massive writer's block that has come to plague me with my other stories. In other words, expect a great deal of silliness, and possibly a ridiculous (but hopefully funny) plot.

**Disclaimer: **I don't own Final Fantasy VII or any other compilation titles. Square Enix does. This is purely fan-made, and will see less than pocket lint and bits of string for profits.

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Do it Over, Kupo!: Chapter 1

She only did this once per year, and only on this day. Eight years ago on this very day, a madman had set her hometown ablaze, taking with it her friends, her peace of mind, her plans for whatever future she thought lay ahead...and her father. On this day, Tifa always found a safe, secluded place to sit quietly and just remember. This time, she chose to make a better use of Cloud's former hideaway in Aerith's church in the abandoned ruins of the Midgar slums. It was so early that the sky wasn't even starting to pale; sunrise was still another hour or two away. In the dark of the church, the pool of water that had sprung forth a year ago to heal Geostigma was covered in a cloak of soft, Mako-colored mist.

Tifa stepped silently down the aisle of broken hardwood, reverent to the fact that life's other side had broken through here, and an old friend's hand still touched the mortal world. A quiet place was all she needed, but a sacred place was all the better.

She'd often talk to her father on the anniversary of his death, hoping that maybe some part of his soul still stirred in the Lifestream that could hear her; that he might catch small bits and pieces of his grown daughter's life, and at least get to see that she was okay now. And if not? Then, she could be content that he was truly at rest. Neither memory nor separation from her would ever torment him again. Sephiroth's first demise was her retribution, and ShinRa had more or less failed for good measure. Tifa was done with grieving, but she didn't believe in forgetting.

Sitting on her knees at the water's edge, Tifa stared down into its depths, trying to make out if it had a true bottom. Most of it did, but the floor sloped down into hole at the pool's center. She suspected it might reach all the way down into the Lifestream, considering that Aerith had created it.

"Hey, it's me again," Tifa started, feeling her face heat up, partly from how silly she felt doing this, and partly from how emotional it made her. "I can't believe it's been another year already, but it looks like things are finally settling down. Even Cloud seems a little happier. We're still running the delivery service, but he finds a lot more time to be at home with us now...Although, I know you never really liked him that much. He's been through a lot since those days, though-he's not exactly that kid who used to pick fights all the time anymore."

Tifa shook her head. What a way to start, and talk about silly! What was she trying to do? Provoke an argument with her memory of her father? But, if he'd somehow survived, this would be a very necessary conversation. That would be so much better, Tifa mused. Instead of him dying, if they'd only gotten separated in the chaos back then, and maybe met up years later...Yes, she'd have a lot of explaining to do. But then, if her father had lived, then that would have to mean that Sephiroth's actions were a little different. How that terrible night affected everyone she loved would have changed as well.

There really was no point in wondering, though. What had happened, had happened.

"...Yeah, better to leave that alone, right? You're probably as sick of thinking about it as I am. Let's see...some good news...Oh, right! Seventh Heaven's doing really well. Marlene's started sort of a day time juice bar for the kids in the neighborhood. I guess you could say I'm running a day-care service part time, with how it's turned out. I'm so busy most of the time between the kids and their parents, but it's kind of like a normal life. With everything we've done, I never really thought we'd see it. I think you'd be proud...I wish I could share it with you," Tifa trailed off, frowning.

In the past, talking to her father like this had always helped her push forward. When her goal was survival or revenge, remembering him had encouraged her. But now, when there was no one to fight, and nothing left to survive but the normal day-to-day, Tifa was quickly finding out that it was only reminding her of everything she didn't have; of who and what was missing from her makeshift family.

"Maybe this is selfish of me," she said to herself. "If you're still there, this isn't really fair, is it? Having to watch a life that you can't be part of..."

A basic fact of the Planet's life cycle was that spirits only lingered in the living world when something or someone anchored them to it. Otherwise, they diffused into the Lifestream, and were reborn as someone, and possibly, something else. Holding too tightly to someone's memory could be the same as imprisoning that person in a life that had already ended.

Tifa stood slowly and took a deep breath, "This really has to be good-bye, then-"

"Wait, kupo!" a voice squealed out directly in front of her.

Over the water, a fluffy, white, and quite fat creature had appeared, keeping itself aloft by flapping the pair of bat-like wings on its back. Out of its head, a red pom-pom grew like a flower, bobbing back and forth with its movements.

"Okay, I've officially lost it," Tifa gasped. "Moogles aren't real, Tifa. Too many kids' stories at the bar, maybe? Just turn around, walk home, and get a little more rest..."

She did as she instructed herself, but the illusory fairy followed, flying alongside her until they reached the church's entrance.

"I'm real, kupo! This happens every time, I swear! We decide to visit someone in the linear space-time realm, and it's 'Oh, I'm insane. Adios, imaginary thing!', kupo," the moogle insisted. "Do you realize how hard it is to get anything meaningful accomplished with you people when you harbor that kind of attitude, kupo?"

"I'm being lectured by a kid's toy," Tifa murmured to herself. "Alright, I'll listen. But, I'm definitely not convinced. Stress can do weird things to people."

"What a bunch of bull-kupo! If I'm just a product of your stressed-out mind, then please allow me to list all those other times I should have appeared-"

"No thanks. Just get to the point! I need to go home soon. I have a business to run and a family to take care of," Tifa argued, rolling her eyes. Cloud was going to be waking up, in desperate need of coffee and today's schedule of deliveries. The bar needed restocked. Marlene needed seen off to school, now that it was finally back in session.

The moogle smiled, a small fang poking through the right corner of its mouth. "And, I have a serious offer for you, kupo. We moogles often get confused for delusions or fantasies because we don't live in the same plane of reality. But, we ARE real, kupo! Anyway, while we live our normal lives in our plane, we're free to move anywhere in your space-time continuum we please-past, present, future, and so forth, kupo. Of course, we can take whatever, or more importantly, whoever we please with us."

Crossing her arms, Tifa leaned back against the doorframe and closed her eyes. "That's good for you, but why are you telling me all of this?"

"Your father would sure like to see how successful you are, kupo. But, that's a problem with him being deceased, isn't it? We've decided that you're low risk to send back, if you want to try to change a few things, kupo," the moogle explained. "You probably wouldn't hurt anyone too badly, kupo."

"I guess you just missed that part where I helped AVALANCHE blow up a Mako reactor, or that other time when I helped kill Sephiroth," Tifa retorted. "I actually did a lot of things I wish I hadn't. Some of those kids I help watch are orphans because of things I did. Thanks for reminding me..."

Persistent, the moogle landed on her shoulder, and crossed its small, furry legs. "Which is exactly why you're perfect, kupo. You'll think things through before doing anything rash."

Tifa paced back inside, and settled onto one of the few unbroken pews. If she accepted the moogle's offer, and it turned out he was the hallucination she thought he was, nothing would happen. At worst, she'd feel a bit stupid, and possibly make it home late. At best, he'd just disappear, and she could be on her way. Either way, if she just gave him what he wanted to hear, he'd probably go away.

But there was one question she couldn't help but ask, "What happens if I run into my younger self?"

The moogle planted its face in his right paw, and groaned, "Why do I get that question every time, kupo? It doesn't work that way. Because you're going back in time, the present we're in right now gets 'paused', kupo. When you arrive in the past, there's really no question that it will change, so it effectively gets 'erased', including your physical self. Instead, you inhabit your younger body. In other words, unless I bring you back here through my realm, you can't really change your mind, kupo. We don't generally do reversals like that unless the results of the change turn disastrous."

Now, there was a problem. What if this moogle was real? Choosing to return to her fifteen year old body with her twenty-three year old mind would mean she could right so many wrongs. Her father could live. Cloud and Zack might not be imprisoned and used as lab rats. If she played her cards right, maybe Sephiroth wouldn't have to go homicidally insane, sparing her hometown. She had no clue how she'd pull that one off, but it was a possibility, wasn't it? But that choice would also mean rejecting everything she knew and loved in the here and now. Even if she met them in the past, without the same trials and scars, and without all the hard work they'd done together, they wouldn't be the same people.

"Will I remember everything?"

"Of course, kupo. Naturally, what you remember will be all that remains of a layer of reality that has ceased to be, but you'll need those memories to do anything useful in the past," the moogle answered.

"One more thing: What's in it for you?" Tifa asked. The thought had only crossed her mind at the last minute, but it was all too important. There was no guarantee that moogle-kind was benevolent, or at least benign. The one talking to her was feisty enough, and certainly had no shame in its mischievous streak.

"Kupopo...You really want the truth? All the catastrophic magic that this realm has been using in the past few years-it's way too much at once, kupo! If anyone else tries to play with something like Meteor, Holy, a gigantic Mako cannon, or the Planet's WEAPONs too soon, our realm is in danger of converging with yours! Humans are way too irresponsible and stupid to handle the kind of space-time technology we moogles have. Can you imagine if someone like Shinra got his greasy hands on it, kupo? So, we cut off this present, which stops the convergence, and then we send you back to keep all those disasters from happening, kupo. It's win-win, kupo!"

Somewhere in middle of his rant, the moogle had lifted off from her shoulder, and was flying in panicked circles around her head. He was making her dizzy, and if he kept it up, Tifa was going to be sick.

"Look, whoever or whatever you are, just calm down, alright? And please, please, land," she begged.

"Ohh, kupo," the moogle sighed, and gently touched down in the pew beside her. "I apologize. Thinking about the potential end of my world as I know it tends to frazzle my nerves. Oh, and I'm Mimo, by the way."

Tifa took the soft, white paw that Mimo had offered up to her, lightly shaking it. "So, Mimo, what will you do if I say no?"

"I suppose I could go ask Cloud, kupo. Not our first choice, considering all the psychological damage he incurred in Nibelheim, but I don't doubt that he'd be more than willing to try to prevent it. Don't misunderstand, Tifa. You have some issues from back then, too-"

"Thanks," she interrupted sardonically.

"-but stability has never really been one of them. And you're welcome, kupo."

Children's tales portrayed moogles as cute, gluttonous, and resourceful. Tifa was only convinced of two out of three, and the former-most wasn't included. Mimo was, if nothing else, a talented, slimy salesman. He presented his request as something she couldn't help but long for once it was an option, and then shot down any idea that she actually had a real choice; even if she refused, he and his kind would find someone else to alter the past, and the life she'd known, and the person she'd become would be no more. Moreover, refusing to go back would be tantamount to telling an entire race of sentient, smart-assed beings she didn't care if they lived or died, not to mention the grave mistake of ignoring what the moogles' realm-or the moogles themselves- might do to this world.

Indeed, Mimo's was an offer she dared not turn down.

"No, you can leave Cloud alone," Tifa quietly replied, shifting her eyes away. Cloud had already done more than his fair share of spine-shattering work to keep the past under control. "I'll go. With any luck, this really is just a small mental breakdown, and I can go on as usual when I'm done."

Lifting off from his seat with a few flaps of his violet wings, Mimo glided back over to the pool. "It's not, but you won't regret it, kupo. Don't be concerned with when you'll go back though. Trust me, kupo, you'll know when it's happened."

The Mako-fog that had veiled the pool when she'd first entered the church suddenly dispersed, taking Mimo with it.

Tifa shivered, but then harshly shook her head. When she got home, she was going straight back to bed, just like she'd originally planned. Then, when she was sufficiently rested, she was going to go shopping for therapist. There had to be more than one or two screws loose in her head for what she'd just experienced. Who knew how long it would be before she could no longer recognize the difference between reality and hyper-dimensional moogles?


	2. Chapter 2

******Disclaimer: **I don't own Final Fantasy VII or any other compilation titles. Square Enix does. This is purely fan-made, and will see less than pocket lint and bits of string for profits.

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**Do it Over, Kupo!: Chapter 2**

The first thing Tifa saw when she barged in through Seventh Heaven's front door was a jittery, betrayed-looking, blood-shot eyed Cloud. The air smelled of much too strong, burnt coffee, and the poor man was choking down sip after labored sip, cringing at the bitterness of each mouthful. When she happened to glance up, she noticed that the smoke detector had somehow violently ripped itself from its socket on the ceiling, and was hanging from a single wire.

"Oh, Cloud," she mumbled, more sympathetic than frustrated.

He could hardly function without his caffeine, but they'd both agreed a while back that his energy drinks were a bit too much; they made him more anxious and jumpy than awake. Instead, she started making sure he had a nice, large, sweet mug of coffee first thing in the morning. The big problem was that if she wasn't around to make it for him, he'd attempt to do it himself, and that was a disaster waiting to happen. Cloud could hardly touch a mixing bowl without burning or breaking something. Considering the cup in his shaky hands, Tifa knew they were both lucky the house was still standing.

"It's alright, Tifa. I know what day it is," he reassured her, but the coy smile plastered on his face also begged her not to become too cross for the mess he'd made. "I made sure Marlene was up on time."

Tifa approached him and gently pried the cup out of his hands. Swirling the deathly black, poisonous liquid around, she could see a massive, sludgy clump of coffee grounds shifting at the bottom. "How late was I?" she asked.

"It's seven-thirty," Cloud replied. "I already looked up today's deliveries. First one's here in Edge, and it isn't due until ten."

Marlene had to be out the door by seven, and Cloud would have been a zombie by now if he hadn't fended for himself. Still, if he didn't have to go anywhere for another two hours-"You should have waited, Cloud. I would have made it for you when I got home. With how strong you made it, you might as well have had three or four cups in one go."

"Yeah, I found that out the hard way," he confessed. As Tifa shook her head and sighed, heading back towards the bar, he added, "Oh, and don't worry about the coffee maker. I'll pick up a new one before I come home tonight."

"If you think we need one," she consented, and hurried behind the bar's counter into the kitchen to see what else he might have done. A dried-up coffee spill covered one of the counters, and although it was unplugged, the coffee maker was still emitting a light trail of smoke. It was just as she'd suspected: Cloud had barely avoided starting an electrical fire. None of it surprised or really even angered her, but one thing she wasn't about to put up with was the kind mess he'd left in here! Wiping up the spill would have only taken a few seconds—nothing that would utterly ruin his routine. "Cloud, I think you forgot something!" she called out in a singsong tone, just below a true yell.

Tifa didn't even have to explain. Cloud made a bee-line for the sink and a washcloth when he emerged from the bar, and immediately starting scrubbing down the counter. "Sorry, Tifa. I was going to clean it up after I'd finished."

While he cleaned, Tifa pulled her ordering book and liquor catalogue out of their corner and began rummaging through the cupboards and refrigerators to see what was running low. This was reality. She was Tifa Lockhart, a woman cursed with a tumultuous past, but blessed with an easy, fulfilling present and a promising future. She had one good thing from that past right here in this kitchen, a man who she'd genuinely come to love, and who, for all his adorably clumsy or maddeningly self-doubting moments, always came through when it counted. Nothing needed to change; what she had right now was more than good enough.

Most importantly, she decided, was that moogles were still just fairy tales! What she'd encountered in Aerith's church was likely just a hallucination brought on by the vapors rising from a newly-forming Mako fountain. "Mimo" was literally nothing more than stinky, hot air. The Midgar area was healing of all the damage ShinRa had done with its reactors, so it made sense that the Planet would gather some of its energy around here. She was going to have to let Reeve know about what she'd seen, though. The public needed to be aware that new fountains were springing up, so they could avoid accidental poisoning. Now that she was thinking straight, it probably wasn't a bad idea to go get tested for exactly that. Otherwise, who knew what kind of madness her brain might cook up next? A tonberry visiting the bar after last call, wanting to talk out its troubles? A fully sentient Cait Sith, on a rampage through all of Cloud's W.R.O. delivery papers as an act of rebellion against Reeve?

"No thank you," Tifa mumbled under her breath, shutting the catalogue.

Cloud paused briefly, peering at the magazine in her hands. "Another one of those 'bait and hook' promotions?"

"S-something like that. I guess since I run one of the busier places on this side of Edge, I should expect to see more. But seriously...a stripper's pole?" she pointed out, handing the ad to Cloud. She'd noticed it almost right away when it came in the mail two days ago; the seller had paid the catalogue to emblazon it shamelessly over the entire back cover. Conveniently, it now provided the perfect mask for what she was really rejecting.

"Hm. You should think about it a little more. Might be a good investment, Tifa," Cloud deadpanned.

"Well...I don't know about the bar, but maybe if you're good, I can have it installed _somewhere _upstairs."

A vicious blush formed on the sides of Cloud's face and crawled down his neck, while a naughty smirk invaded his lips. "I'll have to be on my best behavior."

Tifa leaned into him, wrapping one arm around his back, letting a few fingers slide suggestively beneath his waistline. The morning was still young, and she knew one way to get the start of their day back on the right track. "In the meantime, we'll just have to stick to our normal, boring routine, though," she breathed into his ear, closing her eyes.

"Fine by me. Boring is...reliable," Cloud replied huskily, letting the washcloth in his right hand fall to the floor so he could respond.

His kiss was hard, whole-mouthed, demanding, and in desperate need of sugar and creamer. She'd made quick work of seducing him, although he never really needed too many clues. If she had her way, this was definitely going places very fast, Cloud's coffee breath be damned, and in the kitchen no less.

Not that something like this hadn't happened plenty of times before, Tifa mused. Over the past year, they'd managed to "christen" almost every room in the building at one opportune hour or another. There was even one time when Tifa recalled hesitating over allowing her patrons to sit at a certain table, although she'd washed and sanitized it thoroughly when she and Cloud were done using it. (Granted, those guys did wind up casually informing her of a loose table leg when they paid for their meal.) She would simply have to do the same to the counter, the floor, and possibly the stove this time. What the customers didn't know wouldn't hurt them, so long as she cleaned up.

Groaning slightly when Cloud gently bit her lower lip and squeezed her rear, Tifa began working on depriving her overly-caffeinated lover of his pants. She almost had to laugh; what had started as a silly cover story for a delusional morning had quickly led to quite a raging mutual need.

Then, he suddenly pulled away.

"What's wrong-?" she blurted, but a solid punch to her face sent her stumbling.

Panic and confusion replaced her lusty anticipation instantly. Cloud would never-he had never before-but then, what had just happened? Clenching her fists, preparing to defend herself, Tifa opened her eyes. She was no longer in her bar; she was outside, sitting on bare earth.

"Whoa, Tifa!" a rough, but familiar voice called for her. "Are you okay? Can you see straight?"

"Yeah, I think so...Master Zangan?" Tifa shook her head, and winced. Where she was and what she was doing made no sense, but the pain was enough to make her act along for now. All she was really sure of was that the punch Zangan had thrown was meant to count.

Looking around for a quick second, she saw a blurry vision of Nibelheim as it had been in her childhood. As she refocused her eyes, Tifa realized that there was a reason for abruptly feeling less well-built than she was only seconds ago as well. The clothes she had on were completely different from what she'd just been wearing, but she recognized the loose tee shirt and shorts she used to put on solely for sparring sessions. She'd neither seen nor worn them since she was fifteen.

"What happened? You were defending like a pro, but then you just kind of zoned out on me. A little too late for me to stop, I'm afraid," Zangan explained, kneeling down to inspect her. "Let's check out the damage, then. You'll probably have one hell of a shiner in a little bit. Do you feel dizzy at all?"

"No, I think I just...lost my concentration for some reason. I...I had another fight with Papa last night," she improvised. Zangan wouldn't question that excuse; she always used to vent to him about her disagreements with her father.

"I see. Again, huh? You know he means well, though. He wouldn't have hired me if he didn't mean for you to strike out on your own eventually. For now, he's just doing what a good, paranoid father does," Zangan reiterated, as was his habit.

Tifa paused and took a deep breath to calm her nerves. Only minutes ago, she was about to make spontaneous, shameless love to Cloud in Seventh Heaven's kitchen, and then she was back in the middle of Nibelheim, apparently as her fifteen year-old self, and on the receiving end of a no-holds-barred right hook from her old martial arts trainer.

She was beyond shocked. Everything she'd logically deduced was mere fantasy or delusion had just gotten one up on her. Frankly, it felt more like a sharp bite, delivered with cold, calculating precision to her ass. As Mimo had promised, she'd gone back in time, and there was no room for doubt, no matter how badly she wanted it to be there. The reality was as plain and palpable as the gigantic bruise forming around her left eye.

"But I'm already an adult," she mumbled.

Zangan chuckled, and pulled her back to her feet. "Almost, Tifa. You can hit like one when you really want to, I'll tell you that. What just happened now, though-that's a good example of where you still need to grow up. You can't always count on life cutting you a break or a time out when you need to focus on the task at hand. Otherwise, what you really need to pay attention to might come up when you least expect it, and punch you in the face!"

A snort escaped Tifa's nose, and she barely stifled the urge to giggle, "Talk about a painful lesson."

"It's something," he agreed, lightly slapping her on the back. "I'm glad you learned something, though. Now I don't have to feel too guilty. Anyway, tell your father I'll be gone for the next week. I've got another student in Costa Del Sol who's a real handful. Thinks he's some kind of grand master already, but I swear he hardly knows his right from left," Zangan complained.

"Good luck with that," Tifa said.

Zangan rolled his eyes, "I'll need the gods' favor at this rate. Now, go home and make sure you get some ice on that eye, alright?"

Tenderly poking at the swelling skin on her face, Tifa sighed, "No problem there...See you later?"

"Yep, later."

Watching Zangan disappear into the inn, Tifa finally became aware of the twisted knot in her stomach. Accepting what had happened was surprisingly quick and easy, but that was only because she had next to no choice. Playing the part of a disoriented student was also fairly simple—she was indeed quite disoriented—but for the rest of the act she'd have to put on, she didn't have a plan. There was no time to think or form anything resembling a tight strategy. She was supposed to act like she was a fifteen year old girl with few real concerns, but inside, she was most certainly not. How could she pretend she didn't remember how Nibelheim burned to the ground? How would she restrain herself from acting like she hadn't seen her father in nearly a decade?

Just seeing the town going about its normal grind like all was well with the world made her want to cry. No one ever really knew what was coming. She was the only one that had any idea of what might lay ahead, but Tifa knew she had to act just like everyone else; just like the young girl she used to be. What could she possibly hope to accomplish when SOLDIER eventually showed up?

But what was she really like as a teen? She remembered being frustrated and head strong, but a little insecure at the same time. She was a tomboy, but her guy friends had left town by now, leaving her with the infuriating chore of attempting to fit in-or, at least be social- with some of the girls who chose to stick around. She had nothing in common with them; most of them were planning on being traditional housewives or farmers. Yet, they had some rather uncouth ways of trying to attract potential husbands. Hanging around them came with the unexpected advantage of trying her father's patience with some of the clothes they thought she might look "cute" in. For reasons Tifa could barely recall, seeing him squirm over that one cowgirl outfit when SOLDIER visited made her glow with self-approving pride. He no longer knew what to do with her, leaving her full independence just around the corner. Or, so she once thought. But now, in light of all she'd been through, that way of thinking seemed so self-absorbed and small-minded, and she doubted she'd be able to reenact it with any degree of honesty.

"The gods' favor?" Tifa huffed, turning toward her house. "You're not the only one..."


	3. Chapter 3

**Do It Over, Kupo!: Chapter 3 **

Tifa yanked her hand back from the door she was about to knock on, realizing only a split second soon enough that this house was once again her home. The rising welt on her face was already sure to raise her father's blood pressure a few points. Placing "awkwardness" closer to the top of the list of gut-wrenching emotions she'd probably feel when she saw him again was a bad idea. The kind of suspicion she'd eventually draw from him by suddenly failing to act her age was problematic enough. She didn't need to give him a good reason to think it was because she'd suffered a concussion.

What would he think, anyway? He'd probably ask if she was feeling alright, or if something was wrong on a daily basis. Every time she turned her head, he'd probably be checking up on her, just like he used to during her mildly rebellious former teen life, but for different reasons.

It was time to stop guessing. Tifa turned the door handle, and quickly slipped inside, scanning the foyer for any signs of her father. He wasn't there, which meant he was probably upstairs in his room or at the kitchen table, reviewing town hall proposals, budgets, and whatever other paperwork the citizens of a small village used to bury its mayor. She sighed resignedly; there was no use in trying to sneak around confronting him. Doing that would only be more suspicious. She'd just have to keep faith in the improbability that he'd ever comprehend or believe what had happened to her unless Mimo showed up to rub the bizarre reality in his face.

Oh, Mimo and her father would never get along, Tifa mused. They were both way too strong willed and neurotic for each other.

"Well, here it goes…Papa, I'm home!" Tifa called out.

A few seconds of quiet ensued, following by the rustling of paper, and then strong footsteps coming down the stairs.

"You're done earlier than usual, Tifa. Zangan did tell me he might be running a tighter schedule with his new student in Costa Del Sol," her father prattled until he saw her face. Now, it was time for the expected stern inquiry that he always dished out when she came home too scraped or bruised for his tastes. "What happened to your eye?"

"It was my fault," Tifa croaked, trying for all her worth to keep from crying when she saw him. He was right in front of her, looking exactly as she remembered him, and alive! Intentionally, she blinked her bad eye more, so that it would look more like her eyes were watering from the wound's sting. "Master Zangan wanted me on defense today, but I…kind of dropped my guard."

Her father rubbed his temples, and shook his head. "He sees so much potential in you, but I think he's letting his expectations go too far way too fast. He shouldn't be pushing you this hard; you're clearly not ready for it. I'll have to talk to him about taking extra care."

"But, Papa, he—"

"No 'buts', Tifa. You're still a child. Last week's scrapes were bad enough. I refuse to have you coming home looking like an assault victim every time. Gaia help me if Ms. Landris gets a good look at you before that eye can mend. Knowing her, she'll try to say I'm beating you. You know how some of those old, politically obsessed crones work. She'll be peeking through our windows if we aren't careful," he lectured.

The sad part was that he wasn't wrong. Back when she was—well, the age she was now—there was a widow who lived a block away who was always poking her nose in her neighbors' affairs. Naturally, she counted most of the town as her "neighbors". Ms. Landris was probably just bored, but she had an appetite for finding or creating drama to provoke outrage; situations that needed immediate community action, according to her. And, of course, she needed as many people to join in her "causes" as possible.

"Mm. She's just invading people's privacy. Why can't we arrest her?" Tifa retorted, attempting to sound contrary. Really, she just wanted to help her father solve this dilemma. He always used to complain about that old woman, but she'd never really paid any attention.

As her father launched into one of his long-winded rants, Tifa recalled why she'd avoided these kinds of conversations.

"Oh, Tifa…Do you have any idea how many times I've proposed budget allowances or tax hikes for more in-town patrols? But, no one wants to hear it. The tax money we pay our men to keep the monsters from entering the town is already a strain on Nibelheim's other needs, and they aren't willing to let go of a dime. I can't blame them, though. Even with as hard as they're working on our monster problem, I may still need to contact ShinRa."

"That's pretty bad…"

"There has to be something wrong with that damned reactor. Calling the company into town is a breach of privacy I'd rather not bring on anyone, but people are getting hurt."

"Yeah, they are…"

"Why, just yesterday, Thom over at the general store opened up to find a Nibel wolf pup chewing on his meat inventory!"

"Wow, really? But, it was just a puppy, so…"

"He had to return with a shot gun, and in case you were wondering where I went while you were training, don't even get me started on how messy the clean-up was! That's one shirt I'll never see again. Not even your mother could have hoped to find a remedy for that much wolf blood."

By now, Tifa was slowly backing up toward the stairs, nodding and shaking her head on cue with her father's continued woes. "Well, today was rough on me, like you said, so I'm going to go upstairs…"

"Oh no you don't, young lady! Not without an ice pack for that eye!" he corrected her.

"Right! I should take better care of it. Don't want my face to look like a balloon," Tifa nervously agreed, and followed him into the kitchen.

"I'm more concerned about the pain keeping you up at night. Try not to lay on it, Tifa," her father instructed while he dug out the ice pack from the back of the freezer, and then handed it off to her. "Get some rest. I'll call you when it's dinner time."

* * *

Her room was probably the one thing that didn't feel like something that had come from long ago and far away. ShinRa had taken painstaking care in reconstructing it exactly as it had been before Sephiroth burned it all down, so it hadn't been very long since she'd seen it. But, the original held a few precious possessions they couldn't have known to duplicate. Inside her dresser, beneath piles of socks and underwear, she'd stashed a few of her mother's old jewels for safekeeping. Tifa was truly surprised her father never noticed they'd gone missing from the jewelry box in his room over the years. Or, maybe he did, but was content to let her have them as keepsakes. Her father was strict and a little paranoid, but if it had to do with her mom, it was always a tender spot for both of them.

Then, there was the small collection of plush animals that sat in various spots around the room. There was rabbit she'd gotten for her fifth birthday, ever guarding over the top of her dresser. And, there was that tiny bear that sat on the corner of her desk, holding a flower between its paws. One of her guy friends had given it to her just after her mother had passed when she was eight, trying to comfort her. On the piano across from her bed, a larger, floppier bear plush hibernated on a small stack of music books. How long had it been since she'd even tried to play it? Wasn't the last time when she was fifteen before? It was just another thing that would raise eyebrows, if for some reason her father wanted her to play. Tifa sighed; her day to day life could become a slew of haphazard excuses if she wasn't careful.

Lastly, at the foot of her bed, there was an amazingly life-like, hand-made moogle plush that even ShinRa was way too cheap to replicate properly. Sitting down, Tifa picked up the moogle, and held it on her lap. Where had this little guy come from? Wracking her memory, there were plenty of birthdays and holidays to choose from. It was impossible to keep track of everything, though. She remembered her father coming home with some pretty extravagant gifts from the neighbors when she finally woke from her coma back when she was eight. Everyone had been worried sick about both them, from what her father had told her. Maybe that was when she got it?

"Whoever made you probably saw the real thing," Tifa mumbled. "You actually look like someone I met a little while ago…"

That reminded her: Mimo had sent her back for a very specific reason. She was supposed to use this opportunity to stop the magic overload that was bringing the moogles' realm into convergence with Gaia, or something like that. Moreover, she was sent back to only precious months before her father chose to resort to contacting ShinRa about the town's monster infestation. After that, Cloud, Zack, and Sephiroth would show up in less than a week.

The fluffy form in her hands wiggled slightly then, jarring Tifa enough to make her toss it to the floor. "Ah-!"

"Ouch…really, what is it with teen girls throwing their stuffed animals around when they're upset, kupo?" Mimo complained, dusting himself off. "If that happens one more time this week, kupo, I'm filing a formal complaint. I've worked at this too long to be dealing with such unsophisticated human targets all the time, kupo."

Tifa settled back down onto the edge of her bed, rolling her eyes. "That's what happens when you sneak up on people, Mimo. I don't think it has anything to do with their intelligence."

Flapping his bat-wings, Mimo hopped up to sit next to her and shrugged, "We'll see, kupo. Sorry about the eye, by the way. The guys on the other side didn't exactly listen to my orders, kupo. If all had gone as planned, you would have made it here while you and you trainer were cooling off, but human mating habits make a few of them a little squeamish, so they pulled the plug early."

Tifa thought about it for a moment, and shook her head. Moogles were apparently very, very nosy. "Believe it or not, it was probably better that it happened like this. I was going to be pretty disoriented either way."

"Then, I'm glad it worked out for you, kupo. Now, we need to start the planning phase. Rather than trying to avert just one or two of the major magical overloads, it was decided that the most strategically covert course of action would be to cut all of them off at their root, kupo," Mimo began.

"Which is why you decided to pick on me," Tifa interrupted. "I might still save my father and the town, but how?"

Mimo hovered up to Tifa's eye-level, and crossed his paws. "I want to hear what you have in mind first. It's your world, not mine, kupo. You know how it goes—ethics and such. At the least, we need to pretend that you have some choices, kupo."

Ignoring his snide comments, Tifa turned to look out the window and spotted the two major flash points for what had gone awry the first time around. The first one was the Nibelheim reactor. In due time, Sephiroth would find Jenova in there, and suffer a massive, traumatic nervous breakdown. The second was the ShinRa mansion, which housed a hoard of information on some of the most inhumane scientific research ever performed. After the reactor, Sephiroth would confine himself in that not-so-little house of horrors, and spend the next week learning a myriad of half-truths about the science that created him. Finally, he would emerge with a massive god complex, raze the town, and kill everyone in it, convinced that humanity was his enemy. A long while later, given the chance, he'd summon Meteor, starting the string of events that concerned Mimo the most.

"I'm thinking I waited way too long to blow up a reactor," Tifa concluded, hardly able to believe she'd ever say something like that. She'd spent so long regretting what she'd done back in Midgar. Now, it seemed like the most effective way to save any lives was to do the exact same thing.

"Ambitious, kupo! What are your thoughts on the casualties?"

Warily, Tifa eyed Mount Nibel. The reactor was near the peak and about a mile away from town, so the explosion's impact would be far less than what it had been with the Number One reactor. But, this reactor contained a lot more than just Mako and shrapnel; it was Jenova's prison. The blast would have to incinerate everything there, or Nibelheim might wind up facing a total monster invasion, or some kind of bio-hazard.

"It needs to burn hot enough to kill everything there. Nibelheim already has a monster problem, and I don't want to think of what might happen if little pieces of Jenova come falling from the sky the next time it rains or snows," she explained. "Problem is, I know next to nothing about how to make bombs. I just know how to fight past the people who want keep me from planting one."

Mimo grinned viciously, both of his fangs sticking out. "Come on, kupo. Do you really think I just showed up here to check on you? Your plan is actually pretty close to what I had in mind, and I brought a special tool just for the occasion, kupo," he proclaimed, and brandished a silvery, gil coin-sized sphere. "The word for today is 'precision', Tifa. This lovely kupo nut bomb will reduce everything within a ten yard radius of the reactor to ash. When ShinRa shows up, they'll have no security camera footage to rely on, and no offense, but you're the last kind of person they'd look for, kupo."

"Excuse me—? "

"You're the fifteen year-old girl next door, kupo."

"Ugh. Yeah, to them," Tifa conceded.

Come to think of it, she never did have a moogle plush, did she? Mimo knew how to blend in, though; enough that it made her accept him as part of her room's normal scenery. For all she knew, and from what Mimo had already frequently hinted at, Moogle-kind had its paws all over this dimension.

While not opposed to what he wanted her to help him do, Tifa still found she couldn't quite trust him. As her face twisted into a worried grimace, she felt the corner of her wounded eye sting.

"Oh no, you're giving me that look, kupo. I never mistake that look. It says, 'What's this moogle really up to, and should I really keep going along with his schemes?' Another thing that always happens, kupo, right after you people get over the fact that we're real. Let me go ahead and answer your next question: Yes, my people are all over your world, monitoring crucial activities. But trust me when I say that our operations here are only proportionate to our desire not to see the end of our existential plane as we know it, kupo!" Mimo ranted, doing a mid-air back-flip three feet over the foot of her bed.

Tifa flushed, and lowered her head slightly. He seemed sincere, but she didn't want to leave anything to chance. Then again, what would she do if she found out that he was up to something nefarious? Kick, scream, and tell him 'no!'? "Okay, well, now that the air's cleared…What about the mansion?"

Mimo snickered, a squealing, purring, chortling kind of sound that made Tifa struggle to resist the urge to pet or tickle him. He looked enough like a small, white kitten and threw mini tantrums, so why not? The only thing keeping her from indulging was his grown-up speech, and to a lesser extent, his behavior. He acted every bit like the kinds of thirty or forty-something men who used to visit her bar on Mondays after work, complaining about how they'd "been there and done that".

"Kupopo, at least you're on top of your game. The mansion is slightly less dangerous, but if Sephiroth goes in, I don't think the results will be much different from last time, reactor or no. A little good old fashioned arson should work. I'll sprinkle in a little something to make sure all the paperwork, body parts, and chemistry will burn clean, kupo," Mimo supplied. "The only downside is that after both legs of our primary mission are complete, this place will probably be crawling with Turks, kupo. With any luck, they'll be here on a wild kupo chase for AVALANCHE."

Flopping back on her pillows, Tifa sighed, "It's better than what happened before. Papa's going to be so stressed out, but he'll be alive."

"Kupo," Mimo agreed, "But, don't thank me until we're finished."


	4. Chapter 4

**Do It Over, Kupo: Chapter 4**

Tifa lay awake, staring at the calendar that hung over her desk, willing the next month not to come. But it would, and tomorrow to be precise. September would come, and about halfway through, her father was going to contact ShinRa. She had no power over the passage of time, like Mimo and his moogle kin. Unless they interceded—and he'd indicated that doing so too frequently had the potential to be hazardous—her life as she'd known it would continue forth, subject to change only through her decidedly crude efforts.

If only the messy events of September could play out such that the first of October came and went as any other day, then she'd finally start to believe that this forced trip back to her past was well worth it. She missed Cloud, Marlene, and everyone else from her former time line so much. But so long as when October came, nothing in Nibelheim burned but the wood in stoves and furnaces, or perhaps someone's dinner, she could handle their technical loss. So long as the only things Sephiroth impaled were monsters and charred remains of ShinRa's property.

Tossing over to lay on her other side, she peeked out at the crescent moon, suspended in the beautiful, country midnight sky. She really didn't know how much longer she'd be allowed to enjoy it. Since the last time she'd spoken with Mimo, Tifa had accepted that she might wind up in prison. What she was about to do was very, very illegal, after all. Even if her hometown was spared, if ShinRa found out that she was their arsonist, they'd probably cart her off to some awful Midgar jail or worse. She'd escaped those before, though, so if that was another necessary sacrifice, so be it. It wasn't as though she had no experience living as a fugitive.

Lazily, Tifa kicked back the covers from her legs, and sat up. She took note that the night was clear, and not oppressively cold. And that damnable calendar was still staring at her, reminding her how little time was left. Across the hall, her father snored and grumbled in his sleep. Waking him without an emergency would be both difficult and dangerous. Softly, she let her feet touch the floor, and stood up.

In her dresser's top drawer, nestled along with her mother's jewelry, was Mimo's kupo nut bomb. Supposedly, he'd programmed it to detect the reactor's surroundings and detonate after a half hour of remaining there. Cruelly, he'd left it up to her to choose when to plant the bomb.

Incidentally, tonight seemed to offer very few obstacles.

Tifa made quick work of replacing her soft, loose-fitting pajamas with a black pair of jeans and a long-sleeved shirt. Freezing her mind from thinking too hard about what she was doing, she shoved her feet in her sneakers, lacing them tightly. Normally, she'd have gone for her hiking boots, but there were monsters on the way to the reactor, and she needed to be able to move quickly. Finally, she tied her hair up in a half-bun, pulled on her meager sparring gloves, and snatched the kupo nut bomb from its hiding place, shoving it in her pocket.

For a moment, Tifa paused, considering how she'd make it downstairs without hitting too many creaky floorboards, and how she'd avoid making too much noise when she closed the heavy front door behind her. It was almost impossible not to slam it. Then, she looked out the window again. She hadn't lost any of her agility in transferring to her younger body, and she knew how to make a two-story jump without hurting herself. While it would probably give her some trouble fighting her way up Mount Nibel, the fact that she wasn't as well toned anymore actually worked in her favor for this part, as it would aid in a softer landing.

Hopping up onto her bed, Tifa opened her window and crawled out. She balanced on the sill for only a moment before pouncing down. The gravel beneath her feet shifted only slightly when she landed; her touch-down made a quick, unimpressive thump. If anyone heard her, it was because they were already awake to begin with, or paranoid enough to be listening unconsciously for every minuscule break in the night time silence. Not even Ms. Landris was that alert; she was more of an early bird, and no one could live in Nibelheim without being used to a few animals or monsters scurrying around after dark.

That being said, everyone, their brothers, their third cousins, and their dogs were going to be awake in about two hours. If the blast was anything like what Mimo had promised, a few townsfolk might mistakenly believe Mount Nibel had erupted. Tifa planned on telling her father that she'd heard something rumbling before the explosion to excuse being out of the house.

She started off in a brisk jog, sticking to the shadows and keeping her head down, hiding her face just in case any insomniacs did happen to spot her. As she approached the entrance to the mountain trail, Tifa felt the space in front of her grow suddenly warmer, and a small bomb monster emerged from a pile of rocks there.

"Already? Well, you chose the wrong girl," Tifa quietly mocked it, cracking her knuckles. "I'm not as soft as I was the first time."

The bomb bobbed and hissed in response, powering up to cast its typical fire spell. And just like that, the monster turned a lot more dangerous. Tifa had no idea how the explosive in her pants pocket might respond to a common fire spell. It was high-tech and probably had some fail safes, but that didn't necessarily exclude it from the normal dangers involved with any other incendiary device.

The irony was so wrong; if the kupo nut bomb went off now, still within range of a few houses, she might wind up having to bear the consequences of burning down her own hometown! An accident was still better than a wholesale slaughter, but Tifa wasn't willing to accept either. Dead people were dead people, whether how they'd gone warranted grudges or not. Charging at the monster, she sank her fist into its roasting face, immediately reducing it to the rogue, sparkling bits of airborne Mako from which it had formed.

Tifa stretched while the creature dispersed, satisfied that her first encounter had gone smoothly. But then, the muscle in her right shoulder protested, already sore. Sure, she knew how to fight like that, but at fifteen, her body was not yet used to moving that swiftly or exerting such force. She was going to have to pace herself, and if nothing else, just try to keep the fighting to a minimum.

Continuing onward, she stepped lightly, careful to keep the Mako fountains along the trail at a distance. Bombs liked to hang around and often emerged from them. A little further up, she wouldn't have to be quite as careful. The Nibel wolves there were a little stronger, but they didn't require that she defeat them in one move to avoid spontaneous combustion.

Fortune seemed to be on her side at first, as Tifa was able to maintain a steady trot for about a half mile before her next incident. The problem was, the next monster she ran into was neither a bomb nor a Nibel wolf. Plodding from around the corner as though it owned the mountain, a monstrous, green, snorting dragon appeared. Steam rose from its huge, scaly nostrils when it saw her, and Tifa knew it didn't matter whether or not she was carrying an explosive with this one. If the dragon wanted her cooked well-done, it merely had to breathe out hard enough.

Even if she had remained in her true-to-age body, dragons could still be a problem without the proper equipment. As she was now, Tifa was only strong enough to fend off thugs and small monsters safely, and she wasn't exactly wearing her Premium Hearts.

Her best bet was to hope she could fake the beast out, she decided. Bending her knees like she meant to stand her ground, Tifa looked the dragon in the eye and held up her fists. Dragons were smart; they usually could read body language enough to discern if their prospective prey was willing to put up a struggle. As she expected, the monster replied by lowering its head and snarling, while extending its huge, hook-shaped claws. Its next move would be to rear back and fall in on her, probably mauling her to death before eating the bloody, stroganoff-like strips it had created from her dead body.

"Sorry, but I'm not just going to give up and crawl into your mouth," Tifa retorted, half joking to keep herself calm.

Focusing all of her energy into her knees, she bent them as far as she could and pounced in the dragon's direction. Sailing through the air, it was quickly obvious that her plan wasn't going to work quite as she'd hoped. Rather than landing behind the beast where she'd be safe to run for her life, she felt her feet make hard contact with the creature's back. Throwing her full weight into the landing, Tifa heard a sickening crunch just beneath her. Her heart nearly stopped, and she looked down, expecting to see one of her ankles locked between a set of iron jaws. Instead, the dragon's body gave out beneath her as it collapsed, paralyzed, and she rolled off.

Cautiously, Tifa ran a few yards away from the monster before looking back, mildly shocked at her luck. If she had to guess, she'd hit just the right weak spot, and snapped the dragon's spine. She wasn't going to argue with it, if that's how it this mission was going to go.

Wasting no more time in gawking, Tifa sprinted the rest of the way up the path to the reactor.

* * *

A worthless, life-sucking tin can, home to the world's most malicious parasite: That's what the Nibelheim reactor really was, Tifa considered when it came into view. Pulling the kupo nut bomb out of her pocket, she climbed the few steps up to the entrance, which was, of course, locked. Naturally, this job was going to require a touch of vandalism. And after accidentally taking down a full-grown dragon with her feet, a simple metal hatch of a door wasn't going to stand in her way.

"Hi-yah!" Tifa cried out, sending a foot smashing into the door.

Flimsy, the door flew off its hinges, clinging to the only strong mechanism holding it in place, the lock. Inside, everything was just as she'd remembered it, but much, much quieter. No one spoke, screamed, or fought. There was only the continuous hum and churn of Mako processing. It was like an evil temple, with its rows of monster-incubating pods and neatly arranged machinery. Down the center, an aisle of steps led up to the door over which the name "JENOVA" was emblazoned. Behind that door, the vile goddess who presided over all of ShinRa's abominations slept, waiting for her so-called "son".

Tifa crept slowly up those stairs, keeping a close eye on her periphery for any hatching monsters. Once at the top, she was as close to the ideal place for planting the bomb as she would be able to come. If she had her way, those doors would simply open up, and she'd set the bomb right in front of Jenova's tank. It would serve that vile alien right, for the part she'd played in Aerith's murder—or rather, the part she would play, if Tifa allowed that chain of events to go uninterrupted.

"So, you want in, kupo?" Mimo's voice came from directly overhead.

Nearly jumping out of her skin, Tifa gasped. The moogle had appeared out of nowhere, and was hovering right over the "JENOVA" sign. "You—don't do that!"

Mimo laughed, "Kupooo, come on. You practically murder a huge dragon with that tiny frame of yours, and you're put off by little me, kupo? Have a sense of humor!"

"You were watching me the whole time and didn't help?" Tifa growled. "What would have happened if I hadn't killed that bomb in one shot?"

Lowering himself down to work on the Jenova chamber's lock, Mimo shrugged. "Not a damn thing, kupo. As for the dragon, I was just curious to see what you could do. If you were really in trouble, all I'd need to do is displace the dragon's atomic substance—"

"You were toying with me, Mimo," Tifa sighed, using the same tone she used to take with Cloud or Denzel when they decided to make her play guessing games.

"Kupo, talk about frosty. Remind me not to piss you off for real," Mimo groaned. "Anyway, just a bit more, and—there!"

With a mechanized hiss, the black doors slid open, revealing the room littered with knotted tubes and wires connected to Jenova's masked tank.

Mimo fluttered around the room, inspecting the machinery, while Tifa walked up the largest pipe, and set the kupo nut bomb on the floor in front of Jenova. Its surface glowed a dull yellow, and a series of quick flashes emanated from the top of the device.

No doubt Jenova was wondering when the progeny ShinRa had created from her cells would come to bail her out.

"Never, that's when. Never," Tifa whispered to the monstrosity behind the mask.

"Quite the imaginative engineering mess you humans have set up here, kupo! Jenova's race are a dangerous bunch as it is, and for such a simplistic people to try to imprison one of them is just careless. By the way, kupo, don't talk to her anymore. She's a telepath. A weak one at the moment, but we don't want to give her enough time to figure out what we're up to."

Tifa nodded, "Let's get going, then. I'm not really interested in a long visit anyway."

Breaking into a sprint, she hopped down the aisle of stairs and fled out the doorway, heading back toward the path.

"Kupo! Stop running, kupo!" Mimo cried out. "I made you a quicker way back, kupo. Watching you fight your way up was entertaining and informative, but doing it again with the bomb ticking is just stupid."

On the ground beneath him, a small, white, luminescent circle had appeared.

"Where does it let out?" Tifa asked.

"Just outside of town, kupo. How you explain to father dearest why you're up and creeping around is your problem, though," Mimo replied.

"That's alright, Mimo. I don't think he'd want to listen to anything a moogle has to say," Tifa gently retorted, fluffing the top of his head before stepping through the portal.

Happily, it was just like stepping through a door that connected one room of a house to another. There was no dramatic roller-coaster wormhole rides to worry about, or displaced body parts. Moogle technology was nothing if not efficient, Tifa decided. Unsurprisingly, Mimo was nowhere to be found, so she started walking back home.

Anxiety quickly welled up in the pit of her stomach, though, and she couldn't keep from looking back up to Mount Nibel's peak every other minute.

Before she knew it, Tifa was staring at her front door again, but there was still time left before the bomb detonated. Sitting down on the step, she had to admit she wasn't just nervous; she was also ashamed. Setting off dangerous explosions and destroying property wasn't supposed to be something she did anymore. No, it wasn't like last time; not at all, because no one was going to get hurt or die, but the memory of that first time and all of its casualties were burned into her conscience.

But it didn't matter anymore, because before she could lower her forehead into her hands, a huge pillar of flame burst from the top of the mountain. Seconds later, a sound that closely resembled ShinRa's Mako cannon roared down through Nibelheim, making Tifa cover her ears. The fiery, upward blast reached as far into the heavens as she could see, and continued burning on the remains of the reactor long after the blast. Just as Mimo had said, there would be nothing left but ash.

One by one, all of Nibelheim's citizenry started to emerge from their houses, both curious and terrified. Everyone simply stared up with gaping mouths until her father finally emerged, fully clad in his robe and slippers, and said, "Who's making all that Gaia-damned noise this time of night? I'm trying to sleep!"

Then, all the lights in town flickered off, deprived of the Mako energy that powered them. "Papa…I think something went wrong with the reactor," Tifa feigned ignorance.

What he didn't know wouldn't hurt him.


	5. Chapter 5

**Do It Over, Kupo! : Chapter 5**

When Lazard Deusericus abandoned ShinRa, he left a power vacuum in SOLDIER that every executive of the same or higher pay grade felt "obligated" to fill. Scarlet from Weapons Development felt the most entitled, but on paper, SOLDIER had been instantly drafted into the Public Safety Maintenance Department, sandwiched uncomfortably between the Turks and the Army. From that point on, Scarlet had been proudly flaunted her envy, making boisterous and baseless claims that she was developing a device that would soon make SOLDIER and its ridiculously large budget obsolete.

Thus, it was no surprise to Sephiroth when, late in the evening on the first of September, his e-mail and voicemail inboxes magically filled to their maximum capacity with irate, blithering demands from both Scarlet and Heidegger. Apparently, some ShinRa property in the Nibelheim Mountains had been badly damaged, but both executives were too busy frothing at the mouth to come completely clean about what had happened. In true First-Class form, Sephiroth chose to ignore them. If the incident was of any true importance, he'd eventually hear about it from someone not too preoccupied with interdepartmental squabbles.

Poor corporate communication aside, it had been months since he'd taken a real day off. Since SOLDIER seemed rather intent on imploding, he needed time alone to do some honest soul searching. The secrets he'd dug up on Genesis, Angeal, and Hollander all seemed to point to something far more sinister about the nature of his own medical enhancements. On top of that, Lazard's recent disappearance added to the already growing pile of evidence that seemed to indicate the company as a whole was rotting from the inside out. Depending on whatever he found next, Sephiroth had decided that he might abandon ShinRa. The burning question, however, was what he'd do afterward. In spite of freedom's obvious allure, he felt an unfamiliar twinge of self-preserving fear at the thought—a feeling he'd last experienced as a child.

For now, he chose to concentrate on more pressing matters. Specifically, he focused on repeatedly hitting the series of buttons on his PHS that would erase his messages. There were still fifty of them left. He growled to himself, his thumb flying faster and faster over the keys. ShinRa poured obscene amounts of gil into some of its most inane pet projects, but when it came to purchasing phones or any other non-combat accessories for SOLDIER, the company cut costs any way it could. In this instance, that was why deleting everything at once wasn't an option. No, he had to open each and every single one, forcing himself to bear listening to the beginnings of Heidegger's or Scarlet's temper tantrums before he could erase them!

After about a half hour, he'd finished the arduous task of deleting all of his voicemail messages. Unfortunately, he was just in time for Professor Hojo to pound on his apartment door, sneering, "Consider your right to veto formally suspended, Sephiroth."

There really was no telling how long Hojo had lingered out there before making himself known, but he'd slipped some kind of missive under the door before slithering back down the darkened hallways. While ShinRa deemed him an eccentric genius, Sephiroth knew all too well that the Professor's so-called brilliance was little more than highly ritualized, sadistic obsession. The next time he departed, he'd have to check the door thoroughly for bugs.

In the meantime, Sephiroth grit his teeth, groaning under his breath as he rose to retrieve the small, white envelope. Opening it, he found that it contained a simple letterhead directly from the President's desk, with brief mission instructions:

_To: Sephiroth, SOLDIER First Class_

_Re: Rural Terror Incident_

_A reactor in the rural village of Nibelheim has been reported destroyed. All long distance data gathered from the World Wide Network verifies the claim. The reactor contained numerous high-priority industrial secrets and tools. Assemble a small, experienced team and depart immediately to investigate. This mission is non-negotiable. Refusal can and will result in immediate termination of both employment and self. _

Raising an eyebrow, Sephiroth barely contained a snort. Were they really so desperate as to threaten his life? But there was time to be offended later; this piqued his curiosity. The President and Hojo's joint stunt reeked of irrational panic. What in or on all of the Planet, aside from the fabled Promised Land, could be so important or terrifying to the President himself that he'd issue an official death threat to his top ranking SOLDIER operative, and via someone that operative was known to loathe, no less? Yes, he would most certainly accept this mission and perform his investigative duties to the utmost, Sephiroth decided, pacing back to his couch. Whether or not he ever returned to report his findings was very much up in the air, however.

Settling back down and stretching out his legs, he picked up his PHS and punched in Zack Fair's number. Zack picked up after several rings, and the first thing Sephiroth heard was girlish laughter in the background. He frowned, and firmly stated his subordinate's name, "Zack."

"Hey! Sephiroth…yeah, Aerith, it's work again…What's going on?" Zack replied, clearly still splitting his naturally handicapped attention span.

"Meet me in the briefing room at oh-five hundred hours tomorrow morning. Bring a trusted team of cadets, preferably familiar with scouting mountainous terrain," Sephiroth instructed.

Scuffling noises followed before Zack answered, "Hold on just a second, Aer…This sounds serious. What happened?"

"A reactor has been destroyed. I'll debrief you on the rest tomorrow," Sephiroth informed him, and immediately hung up. Unsurprisingly, Zack had apparently paid precious little attention to the annual military briefing on handling sensitive information. Whatever their relationship, that woman probably already knew a great deal more about SOLDIER than any civilian should.

For once, Sephiroth chose to be apathetic. All he genuinely cared for at this point was exploiting his orders to find the last shreds of truth behind Angeal and Genesis' defection, and hopefully, the nature of his own existence. His days of performing missions without reasons of his own were finished, and his loyalty toward ShinRa had diminished down to its last ounce.

Along those lines, Sephiroth spitefully flirted with the idea of a potential mercenary stint with AVALANCHE. No one else had the resources or intelligence needed to bomb a Mako reactor successfully. He'd only have to turn over a few stones in the Nibelheim area, and they'd surely be there. It was only right that he seek them out; the eco-terrorist group's leader, Elfe, was responsible for planting the idea—that tenacious, unrelenting thought—of fighting for his own purposes in his head. To return the favor, lending AVALANCHE his personal vengeance in their struggle against ShinRa didn't seem too far-fetched. He didn't necessarily believe in the full extent of their ideology, but having a common enemy would suffice for a little while.

Sephiroth found enough consolation in that prospect that he finally made up his mind. He needed no more reasons. Regardless of what happened or what he found, this would be the last mission he performed for ShinRa.

* * *

Tifa bent over the toilet bowl and vomited for the fifth time since she'd woken up. Bombing the reactor had a few serious consequences after all. Trace amounts of Mako ash had quickly worked its way into the water supply, and now, most of the restrooms in Nibelheim were continuously occupied. Almost everyone had contracted a very mild form of Mako poisoning with which, ironically, the village was fortunately well acquainted. Any time someone's kid wasn't careful to keep a safe distance from the natural fountains in the area, that child would spend the next two or three days more or less sleeping in a bathroom. Adults weren't usually so sensitive to it, but ingesting the ash made a big difference.

As luck would have it, her father was one of the ones who somehow managed to avoid consuming too much. Instead, he'd worked quickly with the others to install a make-shift filtration system at the water tower. That was the good news; dehydration could have become a serious problem for everyone who'd fallen ill. Tifa could hardly get enough to drink between losing meals she swore she'd never eaten in the first place. The bad news was that once he'd tended to the town's immediate needs, her father had placed an urgent call to ShinRa with what little power his phone had left. SOLDIER would be arriving in no more than three days' time, and of course, the representative he'd spoken with promised the company's best men.

ShinRa was sending Sephiroth, just like they did before. At best, Tifa had two nights to recover from her Mako poisoning and torch the mansion. To make matters worse, while she'd sat for several long hours on the toilet between heaves, the fact that Vincent was still sleeping in the basement had occurred to her. Just what was she supposed to do about that? Even when she, Cloud, and the others had first encountered him under much more dire circumstances, he hadn't exactly been enthusiastic about waking up.

Burning down the mansion with Vincent still inside was not out of the question; all the modifications and experiments he'd undergone with Chaos and the proto-materia would guarantee he'd survive and make a full recovery from any burns. But Vincent's wellbeing wasn't the real problem, Tifa reminded herself. The real danger was that waking up trapped in a burning building like that would probably piss Chaos off. If Vincent couldn't wrest control from the demon fast enough, he might wreak all kinds of havoc on Nibelheim! What good was destroying all the information and evidence that drove Sephiroth off the deep end if another supernatural force was only too ready and willing to take his place?

Rubbing her churning, aching stomach, Tifa whimpered, still kneeling over the latrine. What a poorly thought-out plan this was!

"I'm never trusting a fairy again," she bemoaned.

On cue, Mimo materialized next to her on the edge of the tub, looking incredulous. "We're only 'fairies' in human lore," he countered. "The reality of our existence doesn't validate every half-cocked tale mankind has ever cooked up involving a moogle, kupo."

Tifa gagged, but her digestive tract had nothing left to give at the moment. "Ugh…Oh, I'm learning, Mimo. You're worse than anything I could have imagined." Normally, she'd play along, but spending the last several hours doing nothing but heaving, rinsing, and flushing had shot her patience and will not to strangle him into tiny, unrecognizable bits.

Mimo rubbed the space between his eyes with one paw, and shook his head, "I'm too overworked, kupo. Please don't use one or two sloppy oversights on my part to demonize my whole race. Also, take this, kupo."

In his other paw, he extended a small, marble-sized nut to her.

"Don't tell me—that's—"

"Yes, Tifa, it's a kupo nut, a product of extensive agricultural and genetic engineering, kupo. This one was harvested from a crop specifically bred for medical purposes. Take it with a snack, kupo, and you'll feel like nothing ever happened. Then, we can work on reformulating our next steps," Mimo explained, and phased out.

With considerable effort, Tifa got back on her feet, and stumbled downstairs and into the kitchen. On the counter, she spotted the last slices of a loaf of sandwich bread, and decided she wasn't going to search for anything else. If the kupo nut didn't work as Mimo expected it to, she didn't want to feed her stomach even more fuel for her retching. Cramming a piece of bread into her mouth with the nut, she chewed both into a thick paste before swallowing them.

Right away, her stomach protested with a growl so tremendous, her insides shook. Tifa didn't need any further warning. She dashed back up to the bathroom, and hovered over the toilet, waiting for her body to indicate from which end it would reject its nourishment this time.

And she waited.

And waited some more.

And then, without warning, she released the most vile, loud, and repulsive belch she'd ever heard or smelled. Afterward, the stabbing cramps in her abdomen began to lessen, and the bloating deflated enough that it actually became easier for her to breathe. Tifa still felt very slightly nauseous, but she figured that was probably either because she'd had so little to eat, or because of the awful bile taste that still coated her mouth.

Now that she'd mostly recovered, food was definitely a priority, but Tifa opted to take a shower and brush her teeth first. Once she no longer felt like her whole body was trapped inside a film of dried sweat, she'd fix something for lunch

Once again, Mimo's convenient devices had worked. As she scrubbed down, Tifa tried to be angrier with him, but level of physical relief she felt wouldn't let her. His plans were outrageously messy, but he certainly had the means to clean up.

* * *

At the end of the day, Mimo had yet to reappear. It was just as well; although Tifa was feeling better, her brief bout of Mako poisoning had exhausted her. Her father had come home a short while ago, looking equally worn. All that was left for either of them was to wind down.

Tifa's father ran a hand through his unkempt hair, whistling when he looked up to Mount Nibel's peak. "What a day. Almost everyone's still sick, but at least we have clean water again."

Sitting beside him on their front doorstep, Tifa closed her eyes against her next fib, "I'm surprised there haven't been too many monsters, with no one to fight them off."

Of course, they both knew why. With the reactor decimated, whatever had gone awry to create such strong monster mutations was a moot point. If the wildlife responded to the Mako ash in any way similar to the village's populace, many of the monsters had probably weakened.

"A double edged sword, Tifa," her father commented. "Without that toxic trash can roosting on top of the mountain, there's almost no monsters, but we're being forced to rely on our sparse coal reserves and candle light."

Tifa rested her head on her knees, and lightly sighed, "I wonder who did it..."

"I'm hoping no one. As much as we need ShinRa to come and take care of their damages, we don't need them trying to pick on anyone who lives here," he explained.

Who in the world would ever buy into the notion that there was no culprit; that the reactor was simply malfunctioning so badly that it blew up by itself? ShinRa most certainly wouldn't, Tifa knew. The company had way, way too many enemies for it to sweep the loss of both the reactor and Jenova under the rug as an innocent coincidence. But she couldn't blame her father for his naïve hopes. He had no clue that anything like the Jenova Project even existed.

As tiresome as her cover-up was already growing, it was time for another white lie. "Last night, just before it happened, I heard some kind of rumbling from up there. That's why I was already outside…Papa, I think I saw some people running around near the trail's entrance."

"No, you didn't," her father firmly contradicted her, but stared straight ahead.

"Papa—"

"You saw nothing, Tifa. If we tell ShinRa that you did, then they'll have more than enough reason to interrogate you. As far as ShinRa is concerned, we believe the reactor malfunctioned, and there was nothing we could have done or known to prevent it, understood?"

Tifa stood up, placing her hands on her hips. This was the one thing about her father than still never failed to infuriate her! Under pressure, he liked to act like he had levels of control that were clearly well out of his reach. "But what do you really think happened?" she demanded. "We can't pretend this isn't suspicious, because ShinRa won't! What if someone really did plan this, and they're still hanging around Nibelheim? What then? What if ShinRa blames us for hiding them?"

Her father rose to meet her, crossing his arms. "Watch your tone, Tifa," he snarled. "Those are my concerns, not yours. I refuse to see my fifteen-year old daughter harassed by SOLDIERs and Turks."

Heat rushed across Tifa's face. She was so sick and tired of having no way out of her father's infantilizing "you're just a kid" arguments. Here she was, eight years older than her physical self, and having been through trials that her father wouldn't dare imagine for her, but she had no reasonable way of proving it.

"Papa, what are you going to do when I'm too grown up for your protection?" she somberly questioned instead, but went inside before he could answer. It was a topic that would hit a sensitive nerve, but one he really needed to stew over.

Retreating into her room, Tifa did some brooding of her own.

Once she was certain that Nibelheim was safe, she couldn't fathom sticking around for much longer. Living at home and pretending to grow up again would drive her stir crazy. Tifa had no idea what she should do, or where she was supposed to go, but she had to move on from this act. Maybe she'd stay close to Cloud, and make sure that ShinRa never got another opportunity to damage him. Or, she could find somewhere to open up a bar or diner, and try to get back to something that closely resembled her old life. Then again, back when she was fifteen before, she'd dreamt of studying under several different martial arts masters around the world. She couldn't deny that the opportunity still interested her.

Without too much tragedy barring her path, the road ahead offered so many possibilities. She should have been happy or excited, but much to her dismay, Tifa found that she was little else but scared. Living day in and day out, she'd somehow convinced herself that eventually, she'd be back in some alternate version of Seventh Heaven, still taking care of Cloud and Marlene. But this new life was not one for fixing a few things and then waiting for time to catch up to her old one. The events that led to those exact circumstances were no longer possible; she was, in fact, purposely standing in the way of some of the most pivotal ones. Her previous time line no longer existed beyond the point when she'd arrived in her past. Trying to sort through the future's uncertainties reminded her of that reality rather poignantly.

Unless she chose to forfeit.

Tifa was well aware that she could still decide not to burn down the mansion, in hopes that Sephiroth would seek out its secrets. All she had to do to regain some semblance of the life she once knew was cease and desist.

But she couldn't, knowing what standing on the side lines would cost. Her father, dead. Nibelheim, gone. Cloud, brutally tortured and experimented upon, bearing mental and physical scars that would haunt him for many years to come. Sephiroth, mad and bent on world destruction. Aerith, sacrificed to save the Planet, just barely.

Tifa quietly sniffled, resisting the urge to cry, finally accepting what she'd known all along: She'd never again know her friends as the people they once were.


	6. Chapter 6

**Do It Over, Kupo!: Chapter 6**

Mimo hovered in front of the wooden door, scratching, sniffing, and occasionally sneezing. It was three in the morning, and he'd woken Tifa out of a sound sleep, insisting that this was the best time to go investigate the situation at the ShinRa mansion. So here they were, standing like dogs wanting in from the cold in front of the locked door that led to Vincent's macabre basement sleeping quarters.

Thoroughly annoyed with the moogle, Tifa scuffed her feet and sighed. Wasn't he supposed to have some kind of plan, or at least some nifty piece of moogle technology that could stand in for lack of one? But no; he'd never even returned to discuss what they were going to do, like he said he would. Instead, he'd all but dragged her out of bed and into this nasty, creepy basement to try to figure out everything on the fly.

"Ah-ah-ah-kupooo!" he sneezed again. "Kupo, kup…I can't stand unkempt human storage areas! How do you live with allergen build-ups like this?"

"I don't know, Mimo. How do you moogles stand flying by the seat of your furry little butts all the time?" Tifa retorted.

Mimo turned around to face her, an angry, fang-baring grin plastered all over his face. "I'll thank you to keep your ass fetishes within your own species, kupo. As for flying by the seat of it, I'm not. I was looking for a way to pick the lock so that you wouldn't have to scavenge the bodies of the sahagins that live down here for something that would pass for a key, kupo."

Tifa rolled her eyes. If they were just planning on waking Vincent up and telling him he was being evicted, then, "Why not just let me kick it down? I managed the reactor door, so this should be a cinch."

"If you really want to bash your foot against solid oak, kupo, good luck," he sneered, and moved out of her way.

Approaching the door, Tifa eyed a small crack right next to the keyhole. Almost any key meant for this type of lock would probably work with a little jiggling, it was so broken. So long as she kicked it in just the right spot, it would probably pop right open. She had a very hard time believing that the wood wasn't at least a little rotted.

Confidently lifting a leg against the immobile, defenseless door, she smashed into it with a solid, well-trained round-house kick.

In less than one move, the door won.

"Owww! What the fff…" Tifa yelped, blushing hard in embarrassment and surprise, hopping back on the foot that wasn't throbbing.

"Solid. Oak. Kupo," Mimo enunciated. "And no, it's not rotted out."

"Okay, you win, you win," she submitted. "So, the sahagins?"

"Yes, kupo. Kill me a fat one. It's been too long since I've had meat," he purred lustfully, almost growling.

Tifa did a double take and stared blankly at Mimo for a moment. She had never really considered what moogles ate; she always just assumed that they subsisted mostly on kupo nuts and other flora. But, with fangs like that...Yes, he would want some protein in his diet. A mental image of a blood-soaked Mimo tearing ravenously into a dead monster popped into her head, and she shook her head. No; moogles were way too sophisticated to eat like that, she decided—or hoped.

"…I'll do my best," she muttered, and dashed a few yards deeper into the cavernous basement. As she ran along, she swore she heard the devious creature stifle a mischievous giggle behind her.

Thankfully, it wasn't long until one of the reptilian, trident-wielding monsters crossed her path, hissing its feral, overconfident warning. But it was also then that Tifa remembered one of the tougher aspects of killing this particular beast: the shell on its back that it used as a highly effective defense. Even back in her older, stronger body, a sahagin required a great deal of precision and several attempts before she could land a successful killing blow. This was going to be a very tedious job, and she was pretty much guaranteed to get soaked in the process from some of its water-based attacks. She would scream if it wasn't carrying the key she needed.

Frustrated and impatient, Tifa chose to abandon caution, and simply pounced on the monster, tackling it to the ground. Its trident scraped her left hip, and she groaned, all the more infuriated when she felt a slow trickle of blood sliding down the side of her leg. Fortunately, her haphazard plan had worked; the sahagin had landed on its back, exposing its soft, white, vulnerable underbelly to her punches. Ruthlessly, she wailed on the creature, ignoring its hisses and screams until finally, it stopped moving. Panting heavily, she pushed off from the corpse, and commenced the grisly task of looting.

Sahagins were terribly gross monsters once dead, Tifa remembered as she pushed the slimy body over to access its back. Whatever treasures it was carrying would be stored somewhere back there, along with whatever other oddball trinkets it might have hoarded. Of course, those other charms just had to include vials of piss, a few desiccated rats' heads for good luck, and the severed trophy genitalia of fellow sahagins it had defeated in competing for mates. Only when she was fairly certain she was about to vomit did Tifa finally catch a glimmer of the object she was looking for, just barely nestled beneath the opposite half of the shell.

Covered in algae, sweat, and various mystery fluids from the monster, Tifa resolved that a shower would be the first thing she did when she returned home. Never mind how she'd explain bathing before the crack of dawn to her father; it would be harder trying to concoct a believable reason why she was so visibly dirty and rancid smelling—one that didn't involve breaking and entering into ShinRa property.

Hopefully, Vincent wouldn't be too put off by her filth to hear her out.

Jogging back to the door, she noticed Mimo's jaw drop when he saw her. "Oh, kupo...Let me be the first to say that I never realized sahagin culling was so…so involved, kupo. Kupopo, I'll just collect its meat myself. You've done more than enough."

"You're welcome," Tifa replied sardonically. "What about the key? This good enough?"

Mimo plucked the key from her hand, inspecting it. "Kupo. A little longer than what I'd hoped for, but I'll make it work."

Tifa relaxed against the uneven wall, cooling off while Mimo wiggled and jiggled both the key and his whole body to work the lock. In a mild act of retribution, she laughed to herself, making sure she was just loud enough for him to hear.

At last, the lock emitted a forceful click, and the door fell slightly ajar under its own weight. "Success, kupo!" Mimo announced.

Filing into the cramped, coffin-filled chamber, Tifa nearly cried. All of them, including Vincent's, were locked! Why were they locked? They hadn't been locked before, back when she and Cloud stumbled upon him in their pursuit of Sephiroth. Someone had to have unlocked them before they showed up. Who would have had a reason or even morbid curiosity enough to do something like that? Not even Hojo would have likely done it; most of what was in this room was his experimental refuse.

"Ugh, I can't stand it! Why is there always so much crap in our way!" she exclaimed.

"Tifa, kupo—"

"I'm trying to do the world—no, two worlds a favor, and—"

"Tifa, the same key works, kupo—"

"Sometimes it feels like coming back just wasn't worth the trouble if nothing's going to work out like we planned. What if it only ends up worse—oh. So it does," Tifa stopped herself. She'd been overreacting to begin with, but between Mimo's heckling and what had possibly been the most disgusting sahagin fight she'd ever experienced, her nerves were momentarily shot. Sneaking around in the middle of the night with very illegal plans was stressful enough.

Sliding the coffin's lid aside, Tifa was unsurprised to see that Vincent looked more or less exactly as he had been in her former future. He wore the same tattered red cape and dark clothes, had the same golden claw for one of his hands, and the same jet-black, unkempt hair. She found his familiarity to be ironically comforting. Some things, the ebb, flow, and even rewriting of time could not touch. Though the circumstances that had made him this way were undeniably tragic and wrong, Vincent was one of those things. The potential still existed that she might befriend him, and not as someone too much of a far cry from who'd she'd known before.

"Kupo, that human beings have learned to create immortal versions of themselves is scary," Mimo solemnly remarked.

"I don't think the people who did this to him really knew what they'd done, Mimo," Tifa replied. "From what he told all of us, he was caught in the middle of something personal."

Mimo landed, and bowed his head, letting his red pom pom flop in front of his eyes. "Kupopo, mankind is dangerously capricious! Almost all of the violent magic that has affected my realm has ultimately been the end result of some personal grudge, hasn't it?"

Tifa thought for moment about that. He wasn't wrong. From Meteor to Omega, there was usually only one or two people acting as the driving force behind those incidents. But, she chose to answer defensively, "Come on, are moogles really any different?"

"We bitch, moan, and complain until the day we die, kupo, but you'll never hear about a killer moogle, let alone a genocidal one," Mimo affirmed.

"Well, I definitely believe the first part," Tifa teased, batting playfully at his pom pom.

Mimo swatted her hand away and shrugged, "Actually, kupo, that's what makes us better. Moogles are painfully honest, so nothing gets bottled up to the point that we hold insane or petty grudges, kupo. Humans, on the other hand, are always worried about what everyone else is thinking, and come up with crazy ideas of who to blame for everything, rather than looking for real answers to their problems. Even the most honest and well-meaning of humans has a million stupid little secrets, kupo."

Narrow-eyed, Tifa turned around and began considering how to go about rousing Vincent. Nothing Mimo had said was particularly wrong, but the truth of it stung. She remembered, back in her old time line, when she'd rescued Cloud from his dip in Lifestream at Mideel, how she'd come to consider how many secrets and emotional knots people tie up within themselves. She couldn't help but think of everything she kept to herself as well, even long after that time.

The entire point of this mission in of itself was to hide critical truths from Sephiroth, who was clearly not ready to handle them. If she woke Vincent up, and let him know what she and Mimo were really doing, he probably wouldn't go along with it. His motivation for coming with her and Cloud the first time around was to pursue Hojo. But he'd never realized that he'd also eventually run into Lucrecia.

"Vincent? Vincent?" she gently called out.

He stirred, shifting in his coffin, before opening his eyes. "… awake from the nightmare," he slurred. "Who are you?"

"No one, really. Just a girl from the town. A woman named 'Lucrecia' asked my Papa and I to find you. This mansion was definitely the last place I thought to look, though," Tifa lied. "What are you doing, sleeping in a place like this? No wonder she seemed so worried…"

Vincent stared ahead for a long minute, and shook his head. "I cannot see her. My nightmare hasn't yet ended."

Internally, Tifa fumed. She shouldn't have expected any different. In her original future, Vincent was like this too, pointlessly intent on punishing himself for as long as possible, and over something for which he really only owned a small shred of the blame. Sure, maybe he should have been a lot more forward with Lucrecia about her bad judgment, but in the end, the worst decisions were ultimately hers.

"Well, that's your choice," Tifa groaned, "so I'll let her know that you're not interested in patching things up."

Doing an about-face, she saw that Mimo had left the room. Naturally, he probably didn't want to complicate things by exposing himself to another human. She walked away from Vincent with her head down, quietly shutting the door behind her.

"Whoa, kupo! He's still in there?" Mimo whisper-yelled, popping his head out from around the corner.

"I can't force him to leave," Tifa sighed. "It would probably be easier for you to teleport him out."

Mimo's pom-pom stood straight up, and he crossed his paws over his chest. "And risk exposing my kind to him? No thank you, kupo. I smelled the dormant beings in him! Gaia can keep its suicidal devices to itself, kupo."

"What do you want me to do, then? Just tell him I'm planning on blowing the place up?" Tifa exclaimed.

But Mimo didn't answer, phasing out instead. Behind her, Tifa heard the scuffing of two feet landing from a large, graceful leap. In her peripheral vision, she could see that Vincent had risen from his coffin, and had followed her out.

"Lucrecia…You know where she is?" Vincent asked.

"Y-yeah. She told me to tell you to meet her at a cave to the south where she used to do materia research—or something like that," Tifa elaborated.

Vincent turned to face down the hall toward the exit, his cape fanning out behind him. "She is alive," he concluded, and hurried away.

When he'd left the basement, Mimo reappeared. "What a fickle man, kupo!"

"He'll be back in a little while. Lucrecia's in even worse shape than Vincent. She won't want him to stick around. We need to hurry," Tifa explained.

"Agreed, kupo. Go upstairs to the dryer rooms, and gather some piles of kindling for each one. Once you're out of the mansion, I'll sprinkle in a component used in the kupo nut bomb to keep it burning long enough to destroy the basement as well. By my estimate, kupo, in about thirty six hours, there should be nothing left but a hole full of embers."

Tifa paused, stewing over an idea. "I think I know what would make the perfect kindling."

Sprinting down into the basement lab, she grabbed armfuls of the journals and logs containing the very information she and Mimo were trying to keep from Sephiroth. While she made rounds of the mansion with the books, Mimo helped by teleporting stacks of them to various rooms, making sure that they were evenly spread for the fire. When the shelves were empty, they deposited the last load of books into the living room.

Finally, Mimo pulled out a small, familiar, blazing globe of materia, and handed it over to Tifa.

In the palm of her hand, the Ifrit summon was almost too warm to handle, forcing her to juggle it. "Hot, hot! Feels like it's at its max power!"

"It is, kupo," Mimo affirmed. "Summon just inside the front door so no one sees it, kupo. Once everything's cooking and well-seasoned, our work will be finished."

With her back to the foyer's front exit, Tifa held the materia out in front of her, and did her best to concentrate. Her younger body didn't have nearly the level of practice with mana usage she was accustomed to, so it was going to take everything she had to call the fiery beast. She pushed her mind as far as it would go, rubbing her own face in her memories of Sephiroth walking casually through her hometown, cutting down her friends and neighbors as if they were nothing but troublesome weeds amongst the fires he'd set. When she pictured her father's dead body, the materia sparked to life, and Ifrit erupted from the floor, unleashing a fearsome growl before he tore through the mansion, igniting everything in his path.

Mimo followed quickly behind Ifrit, sprinkling some kind of white powder into the flames, causing them to burn so hot they turned white. Tifa didn't need to be told it was time for her to evacuate; the singed hairs on her arms from the intense blast of heat was enough of a sign. Flinging the door open, she stumbled a few steps out before falling to her knees in the cool grass, panting and coughing. Slimy, sweaty, and parched all at once, Tifa's head swam. This was not good. She needed to be able to shower before her father caught her looking like this, but the effort it took to use the Ifrit materia had exhausted her. She wasn't sure she'd be able to pull it off.

Nevertheless, what mattered most was now out of the way. Behind and towering over her, the mansion was totally engulfed in fire. Already, she could hear the smash and crash of some of the windows bursting open, and the flames licking out and up toward the roof. At ground level, a hot glow had appeared in the basement windows. Tifa was satisfied with what she saw; there was no way Sephiroth would learn anything from whatever was left over of this place once the fire finally died.

Clawing through the grass, Tifa forced herself to stand, and walked home on wobbly feet. Mimo was nowhere to be found, but she wasn't worried. He usually knew what he was doing. For all she knew, they might not meet again. Tonight might have been enough to stave off a huge chunk of the too-violent future.

Before entering her house, Tifa removed her filthy boots, and hid them behind the bush next to the door. Leaving a trail of scum inside was not an option. Tomorrow, she'd find a spare moment to rinse her boots off with the hose attached to the side of the house. Then, as gently as she could manage, she pried open the door and slipped inside, exhaling in relief when she saw that no lights were on. She outright grinned when her father's normal, loud, obnoxious snore echoed down the stairwell. Blinking a few times to relieve her dizziness, she padded upstairs to the bathroom, and locked its door behind her.

She was in the clear. Now, if her father wanted to know why she was showering in the dead of night, all she had to do was blame it on a particularly messy "feminine accident", and he'd more than gladly leave her alone.


	7. Chapter 7

**Do It Over, Kupo!: Chapter 7**

Tifa shoveled a fork loaded with scrambled eggs into her mouth and locked gazes with her father, who was seated across from her. On the table between their plates, he'd set out the mud, blood, and slime-encrusted clothes he'd happened to stumble upon this morning when he'd gone to the bathroom. She was busted, at least partially, and breakfast was served with a heaping side- helping of interrogation.

"Care to tell me where you were last night, Tifa?" he started casually, crunching on a buttery piece of toast.

"Mmph…not really," she squeaked out from the corner of her now-bacon-filled mouth.

Her father took a long sip of his coffee, finishing off the mug before slamming it down onto the table, making Tifa jump. "Oops, guess it got away from me. Alright, how about we settle for discussing what you were doing?"

"Top secret, sir!" she replied, saluting.

This whole thing was just a mess. He was going to figure something out, eventually. The moment he stepped out the front door, someone would probably be there to tell him about the ShinRa mansion. That is, if someone didn't come barging in first. Unfortunately, the best thing Tifa could come up with as a cover was to act like a total smart ass. Feigning a childish, bratty immaturity was suddenly easy though, because they really were on two very different pages. He'd probably not want to believe the truth even if she told him, so the rebellious teen act had to go up.

"Well, let me tell you what I think happened," he calmly continued, apparently unaffected by her attempts to frustrate him.

This was when her father was the most dangerous; when he kept his cool like this, he wasn't about to settle with becoming infuriated and sending her to her room to think about things. No, he wanted to know exactly what had happened, so he could devise a proportionate punishment, usually comprised of various chores, groundings, or community service. And of course, mandatory lectures over the next year or two.

Tifa straightened her back and raised her eyebrows. How much more of her attitude could he seriously take before he finally started to crack? "Go right ahead. I'm all for a good story."

Her father's left eye twitched then, conveniently betraying his real frustration level. It would only be a matter of time now, and he'd become too enraged to be able to put up with her persistent back-talk. Off to her room she'd go, where the truth would be safe and sound, folded up and neatly tucked away inside her head.

"I think you've been sneaking out at night to pick fights with the few monsters that still come into town. I think you've got some fancy ideas about running off to join SOLDIER and hang around delinquent, Cloud—"

Oh, this was too much. She couldn't handle holding it in any longer. The milk she'd just sipped came gushing out of her mouth and nose, while she pounded the table, laughing so hard it hurt her ribs. Her? Try to join SOLDIER, knowing as much as she did about ShinRa's nefarious dealings with its military? She wouldn't mind hanging around a young Cloud, if for no other reason than to make sure the company didn't eat him alive like it had before, but that was all. Still, Tifa quickly reminded herself that her father didn't know any better, meaning she had to come up with something else.

"—who was hanging around you far too frequently for my tastes, before he did us all a favor and left."

"Was it the salute that gave it away?" she sneered, dabbing up the white droplets that had fallen to the table. Now, it was time to go in for the kill, because what she'd just cooked up was going to floor him. "But…I'm not really all that interested in Cloud. Papa, I kind of think you're right about him. He's just an insecure little boy trying to prove himself. Guys like that make all kinds of wrong moves. No, I need someone with more experience, more _stamina_…I think that maybe…maybe Sephiroth is more like my type."

Victory pounced into her lap like a playful cat. The poor man's face turned red as a pomegranate in winter, and Tifa was pretty sure she saw the tips of his fingers shaking. "Go. To. Your. Room. NOW! We'll have to discuss this later," he growled.

"Why? What did I say?" she exclaimed, stuffing her face with her last piece of bacon. "I told the truth, didn't I?"

"Tifa, you are going to your room _now_, and when I'm no longer on the verge of having a massive coronary from this nonsense, you and I are going to have a long, very overdue talk about how the world out there really works," he ordered.

"Okay...Sorry, Papa," she mumbled and put on her best pout, although she was glowing on the inside. She only regretted having to mislead him left and right, but it was for his own good. Pushing in her chair, she trotted upstairs.

Stomping up, she groaned at what a close call this had been, and where her improvisation had taken her. As effective as it had turned out, how did she even come up with that last bit? It didn't exactly leave a good taste in her mouth.

The idea of lusting after Sephiroth—well, she could understand, from a strictly aesthetics and before-he-burned-down-her-hometown point of view. He could pass as pretty when not covered in blood and soot, she supposed. ShinRa had groomed him to be that way for their public image. Pretending that she was some kind of starry-eyed, fresh out of the closet fan girl was easy for her father to buy, because there were lots of girls her age out there around this time who practically worshipped him. Oh, but if only they knew half of what she did! One wrong piece of information in Sephiroth's hands was all it had taken to turn him from a renowned warrior into a sadistic murderer, and for the world to come within a hair of total doom. There were definitely no turn-ons in any of that!

On the other hand, her disgust was the product of something that had never actually happened. None of it could anymore; not easily. She and Mimo had made sure that path was completely and utterly closed off to Sephiroth, at least as far as where Nibelheim was concerned. The only people who would ever know about the atrocities he could have committed were the two of them.

At the top of the stairs, Tifa stalled to listen to her father's grumblings. What she heard wasn't good; he was panicking. Knowing him, according to his imagination, she probably planned on sneaking away again tonight. Only this time, she'd leave for Midgar, track down Sephiroth, molest him, and be back in time to announce her pregnancy over tomorrow's pancakes, sausages, and syrup—never mind the fact that Midgar was halfway around the world. Even if she went back down and confessed the real truth now, his mind had already gone into its classic, neurotic prophecy mode. Better to leave him alone for a bit, and let him get a grip.

Tifa sighed to herself, "This is why I hate coming up with tall tales on the fly like this. It's not really fair to anyone…"

Then, she remembered: Sephiroth, Cloud, and Zack were due to arrive sometime tomorrow. Surely her father wouldn't dare to lecture them about staying away from his '_pure and impressionable_' daughter, would he? That would be so embarrassing, not to mention bad for Nibelheim's already tense relationship with ShinRa. He had the common sense not to make too much of a scene, right? Tifa cringed, because she knew it wasn't out of the question. There had to be a solution, some other fib he'd gladly chase the last one down with to soothe his nerves. It had to be something simple, down-to-earth, and a lot more believable than an out-of-nowhere, girly fascination with Sephiroth, of all people!

Wrinkling her nose, Tifa stuck out her tongue at the idea. Really, how she brewed that one up so quickly was beyond her! Funny, how much easier laying down outrageous stories was than concocting a realistic excuse. She wished Zangan was around. Back in Seventh Heaven, she at least had a few light, level-headed drinkers who were happy to vent and share advice with her in exchange for a drink on the house on their way home from work. Zangan would have given her the same luxury over a sparring session, but his student in Costa del Sol had turned into a full-time project. The kid's parents had supposedly paid top Gil to compensate for the loss of any other students he might incur while concentrating on him. Consequently, she was on her own. She had to clean this ridiculous mess up by herself.

Zangan…Zangan…That was it! Both in this time line and the last, Tifa was always eager to show her Master how much she'd improved since his last visit. Granted, in this one, she kind of had to fake it, only allowing little bits of the skill she already possessed to show through at a time. Wanting to please him was a story her father would readily accept. In a little while, after he had plenty of time to cool off, she'd head back downstairs, and humbly admit that he was right. Yes, she had been out fighting, but no, that whole line about Sephiroth was exactly that—just a massive crock she'd made up on the spot to piss him off. She was frustrated, she'd tell him, because of how sloppy she'd been in hiding it. Gently, she'd suggest that presenting the evidence first thing in the morning was what had caused her to overreact, but that in reality, she had only been out for practice. Best of all, more than a few snippets of this new story were actually true!

* * *

Mimo pawed at the tablet screen in front of him, scrolling down through pages upon pages of intelligence a colleague on the other side had compiled on the ShinRa scientist, Hojo. "Kupo, this is the kind of human that gives the others an even worse name than they already have," he hissed.

As it turned out, burning down ShinRa's property in Nibelheim only guaranteed to delay the worst that could happen. Heavily encrypted files littered ShinRa's private intranet, most of which were stored on the Science Division's page. Decoded, they revealed the Jenova Project's most dirty, naughty, and profane secrets—facts that key moogle operatives were generally aware of, but turning them up in new places was disconcerting. Human technology was shoddy and insecure enough that if information was electronically present in one place, bits of it had probably escaped to others. With so many people in this world bitter against the tyrannical company, the motives to steal, hack, pirate, and vandalize were innumerable. No doubt some of the Jenova Project had made it out onto the World-Wide Network already.

All Sephiroth would have to do to gain access to the information was bump into the right computer nerd.

And to top it off, the best Mimo could rely on from the human race to assist him was Tifa, that girl who'd reluctantly agreed to travel back to her past, thinking she could fix everything. If blowing things up, beating people up, licking their wounds, or getting them drunk were all that was needed, she would have been right. Actually, there was no proof that she couldn't still, but the resources available to someone like her were woefully limited, while those with more advanced talent typically worked for ShinRa.

Thus, Mimo's new plan revolved around manipulation; more specifically, getting certain people to do and accept deeds and ideas they normally wouldn't, even under the most eccentric circumstances in their wildest dreams. Tifa was no longer going to be his partner in crime. To make up for the lack of tools at her disposal, she was going to become the tool. Or one of them, at any rate.

"Kupopo…She's going to have to get over whatever happened in her old lifetime," he commented to himself, "because once I'm done with him, Sephiroth's going to want to see her a lot more after he visits."

Most sentient beings in this plane of the universe started relationships on the basis of initial neurochemistry—that giddy, happy, fascinated, or horny feeling—and then gradually moved on to something more deep and meaningful. Moogles had long since learned to turn that chemistry on and off for diplomatic reasons. For instance, the beings on one world might have been struck by some terrible natural disaster, diminishing their numbers and inducing mass a depressive state that made procreative efforts difficult. On another, overpopulation could be the problem. With passive, civilized races, moogles introduced themselves formally, and offered a Kupo Serum specialized to their genetic makeup and reproductive needs. The barbaric or violent ones usually received it unknowingly through their water supplies.

Only one race had ever outright refused, citing fears that it would probably be too harsh on the Planet's fragile life cycle. Now, they were almost extinct. Stupid Cetra.

Mimo's plans weren't so grandiose, but to put it mildly, what he was about to do with it violated several well-established and reinforced laws in his realm. The Serum was neither supposed to be used to target only one or two people, nor was it to be specially formulated to drive specific individuals together. Unethical was a gentle word for that type of abuse, but he'd long since stopped caring. When the safety and continuity of entire planes of existence were at stake, the rules were made to be not just broken, but ground down into a fine powder, and released into the wind like the ashes of a corpse.

He'd collected a few stray strands of Tifa's hair, and incorporated them into the Serum, marking her as the target attraction for whoever consumed it.

"You're not the only one who knows how to play dirty with science, kupo-hole," Mimo spat at Hojo's image on the screen.

By increasing Sephiroth's emotional investment in humanity, perhaps it wouldn't matter if he found out about the experiments involved in his gestation. Mimo hoped so, because seeking and snuffing out every trace of evidence was going to take ages.

* * *

Zack refused to sit down and shut up.

One of the young cadets, a boy named Cloud Strife, was making unspoken threats to vomit with every bumpy mile the truck gained.

What error in judgment had made allowing his men to imbibe gratuitous amounts of alcohol before proceeding to the site of an important mission seem passable? Sephiroth sorely regretted it, as he watched Zack squat his was back from checking on Cloud for the umpteenth time, rambling on about some type of materia he'd acquired during a drinking game back in Costa del Sol.

"Hey. Settle down," Sephiroth grunted, rubbing the bridge of his nose.

Zack slurred something else, but then the truck abruptly stopped, shuddering as though it had hit something.

"Urk…What's that?" Cloud gagged.

"That would be our monster. It seems that the Nibelheim area isn't entirely clean yet," Sephiroth answered.

"All right! Let's go kick its ass!" Zack hooted, pumping one fist in the air.

Sephiroth chose to ignore him, simply jumping out the back. He had thought to bring high powered restorative materia for the cadets' sake, but with Zack as intoxicated as he was, he was probably going to have to use them on him sooner. Waking up freshly revived from a knock- out that happened during a battle that he should have been able to win single-handedly would impart an important lesson.

Sighting the hulking, green dragon that had just tail-swiped the vehicle towering before him, he stood aside momentarily, and let Zack foolishly charge the monster.

As expected, the beast clawed Zack down before he could get close enough to strike. With a satisfied, throaty laugh, Sephiroth repaid his target in kind, eliminating it in one fell swoop. Flinging the blood off his sword, he grabbed Zack by his battle harness, and threw him back into the truck. It was best, he decided, to revive Zack in front of his cadet friends, so they could bear witness to his humiliation, and hopefully learn not to follow in his footsteps.

Inside, Cloud uncurled from the fetal position he'd assumed when he saw Zack land at his feet, mostly dead. "Wha—Zack? Zack? Sephiroth, sir, I think I'm going to be—" Unable to control his nausea any longer, a jet of bile forced its way out of Cloud's mouth, and splattered all over Zack's boots.

"He made a foolish decision. As did you. It should not be repeated," Sephiroth explained before equipping a full-strength revive materia, and promptly casting on Zack.

"All right, I screwed up…" he murmured when he regained consciousness, and then hobbled into the corner opposite Cloud to rest.

The two cadets seated up front fell perfectly silent, and Sephiroth nodded to himself. His point had gotten across for the time being. With any luck, the rest of the ride to Nibelheim would offer no further interruptions, and they'd arrive early, just before sun down. Settling back down on his crate near the tailgate, Sephiroth removed a small flask of water from the inner fold of his coat. Uncapping it, he took a quick swig, swallowing before he could question the very slight sweet taste it seemed to have developed. Perhaps Zack had thought to spike it? It mattered not; his second in command had already paid a sufficient price for his misconduct, and he required something much stronger to become intoxicated.

With an exasperated sigh, he finished the contents off and stashed it back in its place.


End file.
